converged into a wide road which was thronged with foot passengers,
horsemen, camel and horse caravans, and strings of asses loaded with
melons and wood. Farther yet the road passes through beautiful
orchards with green sward beneath the trees; mud walls are on both
sides, and over them droop the graceful boughs and gray-green foliage
of an _elaegnus_, with its tresses of auburn fruit.
At the large village of Geog-tapa a young horseman overtook me, and
said in my native tongue, "Can you speak English?" He proved to be a
graduate of the American College at Urmi, and a teacher in _Shamasha
Khananeshoo's_ school (known better to his supporters in England as
Deacon Abraham). He told me that I was expected, and shortly
afterwards I was greeted by the son of the oldest missionary in Urmi,
Dr. Labaree.
The remaining four miles were almost entirely under the shade of fine
trees, past the city walls and gates, put into tolerable repair after
the Kurdish invasion ten years ago, and out into pretty wooded
country, with the grand mountains of the frontier seen through the
trees, where a fine gateway admitted us into the park in which are the
extra-mural buildings of the American Presbyterian Mission, now more
than half a century old. These are on high ground, well timbered, and
the glimpses through the trees of the mountains and the plain are
enchanting.
Through the kindness of my friends at Hamadan, who had written in
advance, I am made welcome in the house of Dr. Shedd, the Principal of
the Urmi College.[25]
Within two hours of my arrival I had the pleasure of visits from Canon
Maclean and Mr. Lang of the English Mission, and from Dr. Labaree and
the ladies of the Fiske Seminary, the English, French, and American
missionaries being the only European residents in Urmi.
I. L. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] While I was sleeping in a buffalo stable in Turkey two buffaloes
quarrelled and there was a terrible fight, in which the huge animals
interlocked their horns and broke them short off, bellowing fearfully.
It took twenty men with ropes, or rather cables, two and a half inches
in diameter, which are kept for the purpose, to separate them; and
their thin skins, sensitive to insect bites and all irritations, were
bleeding in every direction before they could be forced apart.
[24] Christian women and girls share the work of the fields with the
men.
[25] It is a pleasant duty to record here the undeserved and exceeding
kindness that I have met with from the American, Presbyterian, and
Congregational missionaries in Persia and Asia Minor. It is not only
that they made a stranger, although a member of the Anglican Church,
welcome in their refined and cultured homes, often putting themselves
to considerable inconvenience in order to receive me, but that they
ungrudgingly imparted to me the interests of their work and lives,
helping me at the cost of much valuable time and trouble with the
complicated and often difficult arrangements for my farther journeys,
showing in every possible way that they "know the heart of a
stranger," being themselves "strangers in a strange land." Specially,
I feel bound to acknowledge the kindness and hospitality shown to me
by the Presbyterian missionaries in Urmi, who were aware that one
object of my journey through North-West Persia was to visit the
Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Missions, which work on different
and, I may say, opposite lines from their own.
NOTES ON PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN URMI[26]
A sketch of Urmi would present few features of general interest if it
did not embrace an outline of the mission work which is carried on
there on a large scale, first by the numerous agents, lay and
clerical, male and female, of the American Presbyterian Board of
Foreign Missions, and next by the English Mission clergy and the
Sisters of Bethany, who form what is known as "The Archbishop of
Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians."
Besides these there is a Latin Mission of French Lazarists, aided by
Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, which has been at work in Urmi and on
the plain of Salmas for forty years.
Urmi, the reputed birthplace of Zoroaster, and in past ages the great
centre of Fire Worship, was made the headquarters of the American
Mission to the Nestorians in 1834, which, with the exception of the
C.M.S. Mission in Julfa, was the only Protestant Mission in Persia up
to the year 1885.
At present there are four ordained American missionaries, several
ladies, and a medical missionary working in Urmi. Under their
superintendence are thirty ordained and thirty-one licentiate pastors,
ninety-three native helpers, and three Bible-women. The number of
Nestorians or Syrians employed as teachers in the College and the
Fiske Seminary for girls, as translators, as printers, and as medical
assistants, is very considerable.
The whole plain of Urmi, with its innumerable villages, and the
eastern portion of the Kurdish mountains, with its Syrian hamlets, are
included within the sphere of Mission work.
This Mission has free access to Syrians, Armenians, and Jews, but for
Moslems there can be no public preaching or teaching, nor can a Moslem
openly profess Christianity, or even frequent the Syrian services,
without being a marked man. Hence, while all opportunities are
embraced of conversation with Mohammedans, and of circulating the
Bible among them, the mission work is chiefly among nominal
Christians.
The Americans own a very large amount of property at Urmi. The Fiske
Seminary--a High School, in which a large number of girls receive
board as well as education--is within the city walls, as well as some
of the houses of both clerical and lady missionaries. About a mile
outside they have acquired a beautiful and valuable estate of about
fifteen acres, plentifully wooded and watered, and with some fine
avenues of planes. On this are the large buildings of the Urmi
College, the professors' houses, the Dispensary, and the Medical
Mission Hospitals for the sick of both sexes.
A very high-class education is given in the Urmi College, and in
addition to the general course there are opportunities for both
theological and medical education. Last year there were 151 students,
of which number eighteen graduated.
The education given is bringing about a result which was not
anticipated. The educated Syrian and Armenian young men, far from
desiring generally to remain in their own country as pastors and
teachers, and finding no opportunities of "getting on" otherwise, have
of late been seized with a craze for leaving Persia for America,
Russia, or any other country where they may turn their education to
profitable account. It is hardly necessary to add that the admirable
training and education given in the Fiske Seminary do not produce a
like restlessness among its "girl graduates." The girls marry at an
early age, make good housewives, and are in the main intelligent and
kindly Christians.
Possibly the education given in the Urmi College is too high and too
Western for the requirements of the country and the probable future of
the students. At all events similar regrets were expressed in Urmi, as
I afterwards heard, regarding some of the American Mission Colleges in
Asia Minor. The missionaries say that the directly religious results
are not so apparent as could be desired, that the young men are not
ready to offer themselves in any numbers for evangelistic work, and
that the present tendency is to seek secular employment and personal
aggrandisement.
Though this secular tendency comes forward strongly at this time, a
number of evangelistic workers scattered through Persia, Turkey, and
Russia[27] owe their education and religious inspiration to the
teachings of the Urmi College. At present a few of the young men have
banded themselves together to go forth as teachers and preachers with
the object of carrying the Gospel to all, without distinction of
nationality. The hopefulness of this movement is that it is of native
origin, and that the young men are self-supporting. A capable Syrian
physician and a companion are also preaching and healing at their own
cost, only accepting help towards the expense of medicines.
The Medical Mission at Urmi, with its well-equipped Dispensary and its
two admirable Hospitals, is of the utmost value, as such missions are
all the world over.
Dr. Cochrane, from his courtesy and attention to the niceties of
Persian etiquette, is extremely acceptable to the Persian authorities,
and has been entrusted by them more than once with missions involving
the exercise of great tact and ability. He is largely trusted by the
Moslems of Urmi and the neighbourhood, and mixes with them socially on
friendly and easy terms.
He and some of the younger missionaries were born in Persia, their
fathers having been missionaries before them, and after completing
their education in America they returned, not only with an intimate
knowledge of etiquette and custom, as well as of Syriac and Persian,
but with that thorough sympathy with the people whom they are there to
help and instruct, which it is difficult to gain in a single
generation, and through languages not acquired in childhood. Dr.
Cochrane has had many and curious dealings with the Kurds, the dreaded
inhabitants of the mountains which overhang the beautiful plain of
Urmi, and a Kurd, who appears to be in perpetual "war-paint," is the
gatekeeper at the Dispensary. One of the most singular results of the
influence gained over these fierce and predatory people by the
"Missionary _Hak[=i]m_" occurred in 1881, when Obeidullah Khan, with
11,000 Kurds, laid siege to Urmi.
Six months previously, at this Khan's request, Dr. Cochrane went up a
three days' journey into the mountains, where he remained for ten
days, during which time he cured the Khan of severe pneumonia, and
made the acquaintance of several of the Kurdish chiefs. Before the
siege began Obeidullah Khan sent for Dr. Cochrane, saying that he
wished to know his residence and who his people were, so as to see
that none of them suffered at the hands of his men. Not only this, but
he asked for the names of the Christian villages on the plain, and
gave the _Hak[=i]m_ letters with orders that nothing should be touched
which belonged to them. The mission families were assembled at the
College, and 500 Christians, with their cattle and horses, took refuge
in the College grounds, which were close to the Kurdish lines. The
siege lasted seven weeks, with great loss of life and many of "the
horrors of war," as time increased the fury of both Kurds and
Persians. But Obeidullah kept his word, and for the sake of the
_Hak[=i]m_ and his healing art, not only was not a hair on the head of
any missionary touched, but the mixed multitude within the gates and
the herds were likewise spared.
Mrs. Cochrane, the widow of the former medical missionary,
superintends the food and the nursing in the hospitals, and I doubt
whether the most fanatical Kurd or Persian Moslem could remain
indifferent to the charm of her bright and loving presence. The
profession of Dr. Cochrane opens to him homes and hearts everywhere.
All hold him as a friend and benefactor, and he has opportunities,
denied to all others, of expounding the Christian faith among Moslems.
A letter from him is a safe-conduct through some parts of the Kurdish
mountains, and the mere mention of his name is a passport to the
good-will of their fierce inhabitants.
The work of the mission is not confined to the city of Urmi. Among the
villages of the plain there are eighty-four schools, taught chiefly in
Syriac, seven of which are for girls only. The mission ladies
itinerate largely, and are warmly welcomed by Moslem as well as
Christian women, and even by those families of Kurds who, since their
defeat in 1881, have settled down to peaceful pursuits, some of them
even becoming Christians.
In fifty years the American missionaries have gained a very
considerable and wide-spread influence, not only by labours which are
recognised as disinterested, but by the purity and righteousness of
their lives; and the increased friendliness and accessibility of the
Moslems of Urmi give hope that the purer teachings of Christianity and
the example of the life of our Lord are regarded by them with less of
hostility or indifference than formerly.
The history of the mission is best given in the words of Dr. Shedd,
one of its oldest members.[28]
The communicants of the "Evangelical Syriac Church," which might be
termed, from its organisation and creed, the _Presbyterian Syriac
Church_, numbered 216 in 1857 and 2003 in 1887.
Apart from the results of Christian teaching and example, there can
be, I think, no doubt that the residence of righteous foreigners in
Urmi for over half a century has had a most beneficial effect on the
condition of the Nestorians. At the time when the first American
missionaries settled in Urmi the yoke of Islam was hardly bearable.
The Christians were oppressed and plundered, their daughters were
taken by violence, and they were scarcely allowed to practise the
little religion left to them. The Persian Government, sensitive as it
is to European opinion, has gradually remedied a state of matters upon
which the reports of the missionaries were justly to be dreaded, and
at the present time the Christians of Urmi and the adjacent plain have
comparatively very little to complain of.
At the same time the Syriac Church was at its lowest ebb, absolutely
sunk in ignorance and superstition. It had no exposition of the Bible,
and all worship was in the ancient Syriac tongue, then as now "not
understanded of the people." It had no books or any ability to
establish schools. Bibles were scarce, and a single copy of the Psalms
could not be bought for less than 32s. The learned nuns and
deaconesses of the early days were without successors. Women were
entirely neglected, and it was regarded as improper for the younger
among them to be seen at church. In Urmi not a woman could read, and
in the whole Nestorian region they were absolutely illiterate, with
the exception of the Patriarch's sister and two or three nuns.
The translation of the Bible into modern Syriac, a noble work, now
undergoing revision; the College; the Female Seminary; the translation
and publication of many luminous books; the circulation of a
periodical called _Rays of Light_, together with fifty years of
intercourse with men and women whose chief aim is the religious and
intellectual elevation of the people among whom they dwell, have
wrought a remarkable change, though that the change is menaced with
perils, and is not an absolutely unmixed good, cannot be gainsaid.
It is for the future to decide whether the Reform movement in Umri or
elsewhere could survive in any strength the removal of the agency
which inaugurated it, and whether a Church without a ritual and with a
form of government alien to the genius of the East and the traditions
of the fathers, can take root in the affections of an eminently
conservative people.
The Mission, founded by the present Archbishop of Canterbury at the
request of the _Catholicos_ of the East, Mar Shimun, the Patriarch of
the Syrian Church, arrived in Urmi in the autumn of 1885. At the time
of my visit it consisted of five mission priests, graduates of Oxford
and Cambridge Universities, and an ordained Syrian, four of whom were
at the headquarters in Urmi, one in the Kurdish mountains, and one on
the Urmi Plain. Four Sisters of Bethany arrived in the spring of 1890
for the purpose of opening a boarding-school for girls and instructing
the women.
It is hardly necessary to say that the lines on which the Anglican and
American missions proceed are diametrically different, and the modes
of working are necessarily in opposition. The one is _practically_ a
proselytising agency, and labours to build up a Presbyterian Church in
Persia; the other purposes to "bring back an ancient church into the
way of truth, and so prepare it for its union with its mother church,
the Orthodox Church of the East." The objects of the latter and its
ecclesiastical position are stated briefly in the note below.[29]
The actual work to be done by the Mission is thus summed up by its
promoters: "The work of the Mission is in the first place to train up
a body of literate clergy; secondly, to instruct the youth generally
in both religious and secular knowledge; and thirdly, to print the
very early liturgies and service-books, to which the Assyrians are
much attached, which have never been published in the original, and of
which the very primitive character is shown by their freedom from
doubtful doctrine. The Mission in no way seeks to Anglicanise the
Assyrians on the one hand, nor, on the other, to condone the heresy
which separated them from the rest of Christendom or to minimise its
importance."
The English clergy are celibates, receive no stipends, and live
together, with a common purse, each receiving L25 per annum for
personal expenses.
It is not a proselytising mission. It teaches, trains, and prints. It
has one High School at Urmi for boys under seventeen, and two upon the
Urmi Plain, but the work to which these may be regarded as subsidiary
is the Urmi Upper School for priests, deacons, and candidates for holy
orders. In these four establishments there are about 200 pupils,
mostly boarders. There are also seventy-two village day-schools, and
the total attendance last year was--boys 1248, girls 225. Seventy-six
deacons and young men above seventeen are in the Upper School at Urmi.
The education given in the ordinary schools is on a level with that of
our elementary schools. In the school of St. Mary and St. John, which
contains priests, deacons, and laymen, some being mountaineers, the
subjects taught are Holy Scripture, catechism, Scripture geography,
universal history, liturgy, preaching, English, Persian, Osmanli
Turkish, arithmetic, and Old Syriac.[30] Preaching is taught
practically. A list of 100 subjects on a systematic theological plan
has been drawn up, and each week two of the deacons choose topics from
the list and write sermons upon them.
In 1887 the Mission clergy drew up a catechism containing between 200
and 300 questions, with "Scripture proofs," which the scholars in all
their schools are obliged to learn by heart.
The boys of the Urmi High School and of the Upper School board in the
mission house, and are under the constant supervision of the clergy.
Their food and habits of living are strictly Oriental. All imitations
of Western manners and customs are forbidden, the policy of the
Mission being to make the Syrians take a pride in their national
customs, which as a rule are adapted to their circumstances and
country, and to look down upon those who ape European dress and
manners. Denationalisation is fought against in every possible way.
A year and a half ago work among women was begun by four ladies of the
community of the Sisters of Bethany. The position of Syrian women, in
spite of its partial elevation by means of the Fiske Seminary, is
still very low, and within the Old Church there is an absolute
necessity for raising it, and through it the tone of the home life and
the training of children. These ladies have thirty boarders in their
school between the ages of eight and sixteen, a previous knowledge of
reading acquired in the village schools being a condition of
admission. The daily lessons consist of Bible teaching, the catechism
before referred to, ancient and modern Syriac, geography, arithmetic,
and all branches of housework and needle-work. Due regard is paid to
Syrian customs, and the picturesque Syrian costume is retained.
Since these ladies have acquired an elementary knowledge of Syriac
they have been itinerating in the Urmi villages, holding Bible
classes, giving instruction, and distributing medicines among the
sick. The ignorance and superstition of the Christian women are almost
past belief. One great difficulty which the "sisters" have to
encounter arises from the early marriages of the girls, child-brides
of eleven and twelve years old being quite common. It may reasonably
be expected that the presence and influence, the gentleness and
self-sacrifice of these refined and cultured Christian ladies will
tell most favourably upon their pupils, and strengthen with every
month of their residence in Urmi. The Moslems understand and respect
the position of voluntarily celibate women, and speak of them as
"those who have left the world."
The Mission clergy of late have striven to instruct the adult Syrian
population of the Urmi Plain by preaching among them systematically,
explaining in a very elementary manner the principles of Christianity,
and their application to the life of man. They have also set up a
printing press, and have already printed in Syriac type a number of
school books, the Catechism, the _Liturgy of the Apostles_, the most
venerable of the Syrian Liturgical documents, the _Second_ and _Third
Liturgies_, the _Baptismal Office_, ancient and modern Syriac
grammars, and a Lectionary.
It is the earnest hope of the promoters of this Mission that if this
ancient Oriental church, once the first mission agency in the world,
can be reformed and enlightened, she may yet be the means of
evangelising the two great sects of Moslems by means of missionaries
akin to them in customs, character, and habits of thought--"Orientals
to Orientals."
The subject of Christian missions in Persia is a very interesting one,
and many thoughtful minds are asking whether Christianity is likely to
be a factor in the future of the Empire? As things are, no direct
efforts to convert Moslems to Christianity can be made, for the death
penalty for apostasy is not legally abolished, and even if it were,
popular fanaticism would vent itself upon proselytes. It must be
recognised that the Christian missionary is a disturbing element in
Persia. He is tolerated, not welcomed, and tolerated only while his
efforts to detach people from the national faith are futile. Missions
have been in operation in Persia for more than fifty years, and
probably at the present time there are over seventy-five missionaries
at work in the country. If the value of their work were to be judged
of by the number of Moslem converts they have made it must be
pronounced an _absolute failure_.
The result of the impossibility of making any direct attack upon Islam
is that these excellent men and women are at present ostensibly
engaged in the attempt to purify the faith and practice of the Syrian
and Armenian churches, to enlighten their members religiously and
intellectually, and to Christianise the Jews, waiting patiently for
the time when an aggressive movement against Islam may be possible. In
the meantime the Holy Scriptures are being widely disseminated; the
preacher of Christianity itinerates among the villages, the Christian
religion is greatly discussed, and missionary physicians, the true
pioneers of the faith, are modifying by their personal influence the
opposition to the progress of the missionaries with whom they are
associated.
On the whole, and in spite of slow progress and the apparently
insurmountable difficulties presented by hostility or indifference, I
believe that Christian missions in Persia, especially by their
educational agencies and the circulation of the Bible, are producing
an increasing under-current, tending towards secular as well as
religious progress, and are gaining an ever-growing influence, so
that, lamentably slow as the advance of Christianity is, its prospects
cannot justly be overlooked in considering the probable future of
Persia.[31]
FOOTNOTES:
[26] The name of the town and lake is spelt variously Urmi, Urumi,
Urumiya, Ourmia, and Oroomiah. The Moslems call it Urumi, and the
Christians Urmi, to which spelling I have adhered.